Although suturing has traditionally been used to join tissue and close wounds, in recent years, surgical stapling has begun to supplant suturing because of the time-saving afforded and because less skill is generally required to effect surgical stapling as a result of the availability of tools which are consistent in precise implantation of a surgical staple. Surgical staples have been used not only to join portions of tissue to close a wound or the like, but to affix a prosthesis to tissue, as in annuloplasty operations, for example.
The patent art is replete with a plethora of U.S. patents showing a wide variety of surgical staples made both of shape-memory material and of non-shape memory material which undergoes plastic, i.e. non-reversible, deformation in order to effect joinder or constriction of tissue. It is also replete with tools or devices for implanting such staples into body or organ tissue which may be used to effect such methods of tissue joinder and/or constriction using such surgical staples. Examples of such are found in the following U.S. patents and published applications: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,485,816; 4,505,273; 5,413,584; 6,702,826; 6,913,608; 7,037,334; 7,473,258; 7,485,142 and U.S. Published Application Nos. US 2003/0171776 and US 2005/0283190.
The multitude of patents in this art show that improvements have long been sought, and the search for improved methods of surgical stapling continues.